


The Call

by Croeses



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, The Void
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:02:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29533791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Croeses/pseuds/Croeses
Summary: Its journey through the ruins of the old kingdom had only one purpose.
Kudos: 8





	The Call

It had no name.

It had no recollections of the past. It had no aspirations for the future. 

It had no feeling, be it good or bad, toward anyone or anything.

There was only the inertia of living. There was the everyday fight for survival, killing so that it would not be killed itself. There was the solitude of the empty cliffs and the darkness of their cold caverns. There were the days passing by, one like the other, leaving no trace of themselves.

Then, a call came. It cut through the bug’s shell, reaching the emptiness within. It turned its head toward the direction it came and looked at the vast nothingness ahead. The summoning did not come by sound or light. Yet, it resonated more strongly than those material sensations could ever have.

It shook itself as if chasing away a dream and left. It left its territory and descended to a fading town and then even lower, to a dead kingdom.

The old ruins of this failed civilization proved not so different from the bug’s cliffs. Here too, there were hostile creatures ready to attack at the smallest movement. Here too, there were winding paths and deathly traps. The sense of familiarity kept it moving through the ever-changing surroundings, searching and searching.

There was another kind of bugs here. They did not attack the small bug coming their way and they seemed happy enough to talk at it without ever expecting an answer in return. It listened to them, for they sometimes they said things that were helpful to the bug or offered something it needed. Many times, they asked for parts of the fossilized shells of its defeated enemies. The bug started collecting the trinkets and bringing them back in a sort of ritual in which there was always something given and something taken. Other bugs, instead, would act as if they knew it or at least the reason it came here. But the bug had no curiosity to find for itself what they knew or wanted from it. There was only the call to be followed.

The more it descended through the caverns, the more it walked the old roads and paths, the more the story of the kingdom came to life. The story of its greatness and its destruction painted itself to the traveler in every bug, every building, every breath of air that felt as old as the stone on which it stepped.

Eventually, it descended into the Abyss. Downwards, forever downwards, until it saw the corpses. Shades started to rise from the ground, black as night. They were very like its own shade, when the two of them were separated by that experience that felt as much as death as it felt a dream. And just as its shade, these shades too tried to get closer, they too hurt the bug. It hit back and they vanished without a trace. It looked around. In the distance, other shades took form and rose up. Unlike the bugs above, they did not seem hostile, just lost.

Through the cracks in the ground, darkness itself reached towards the bug. This too was a call, so very different from the one before. The bug shook itself as if chasing away a nightmare and continued on its way.

The second time it came to the Abyss, it remembered. Deeper than ever before, among the motherly darkness of the earth, it found itself. It understood its own role and understood what it must do to answer the call.

It hunted down the Dreamers, the guardians of the Hollow Knight. Inside their dreams, they were helpless before its nail. They fell and the door to the Black Egg Temple opened.

As its steps reverberated through the long halls of the Temple, the call resonated inside the bug, closer than ever before. There was something beside the call within the bug. It stopped and tilted its head to the side. There was a sense of…purpose? The bug held on to the new feeling and started walking again.

At the end, it found the Hollow Knight. Tied up by its chains, the vessel laid suspended in the middle of the room. It looked down and the bug looked up. Their eyes met. After a moment, the bug moved to cut the chains, one after the other, until the Hollow Knight was free. The fight commenced and the bugs clashed again and again.

It was a long, grueling fight but the bug persevered as it was its habit and, in the end, the Hollow Knight was subdued. With no time to lose, the bug drew the Dream Nail and cut the vessel with it.

There was light. And the source of it… 

She was beautiful. She was the Light. She was the Call. Its eyes were blinded, its shell was burning and the instinct to crawl and hide somewhere cold and dark was overwhelming. She called it to its death and there was nowhere to run from her light. And yet, how sweet her illusion felt through the pain. 

The void inside the bug screamed out in pain and it gripped its nail and hit back against Her. She was attacking now and its eyes were still blind but the void within felt every ray coming its way. 

The bug lost itself to the fight, to the clash between the darkness inside it and the light outside of it. And then, after a moment or an eternity, She grew afraid and retreated. The Void, the true one, the endless one, was reaching upwards for Her. 

The Void’s call again sounded inside the bug and it listened. She was the enemy. She was the Light that chased the shadows. Darkness must reign and She must die. 

The bug followed after Her, fought Her again, until eventually the Void reached them. Inside It, the bug felt the shades of all its siblings, so long gone and yet here once again. Among them, inside the Void that birthed them all, it finally found peace.

She was staving off the darkness with her light, but the Void was endless and unrelenting, driven by one purpose. She grew tired. The light became weaker and weaker, until-

There was night.


End file.
